A UN SecGen was assassinated in the 60s, so this isn’t unprecedented.
The complaining about supposed shortcomings of the UN is tired and misguided. The UN is far more than just the Security Council and matters of high politicking. It’s also UNHCR, on which million of refugees depend for their life. It’s security forces almost literally acting as hostages to secure the peace in dozens of stale conflicts. It’s the ITU, iSO, and whatever their mail agency is called providing the basic necessities for international trade, travel, and communication. It obviously has some power to establish international law and decency, or otherwise that Saudi two-bit dictator wouldn’t feel threatened enough to make threads himself, and it’s obviously relevant enough for that thread to remain all bark and no bite. In terms of international justice, the UN has successfully run dozens of tribunals and investigations, from Libanon to the Balkans to Ruanda.
Yes, other matters see little progress. Politics is slowly boring holes into thick wood or whatever the saying is. That has little to do with the UN, which is just a forum for nation states to talk. Those matters simply have no solution that everyone agrees to (yet),
In that vain, it’s a mistake to even expect the UN to have the sort of power to force its own will onto states, or to even expect it to have any such will at all. For political questions, the UN does not have an identity, or any power, separate from that of its member states. That’s why it’s headed by a Secretary General, not a President or Prime Minister.
The complaining about supposed shortcomings of the UN is tired and misguided. The UN is far more than just the Security Council and matters of high politicking. It’s also UNHCR, on which million of refugees depend for their life. It’s security forces almost literally acting as hostages to secure the peace in dozens of stale conflicts. It’s the ITU, iSO, and whatever their mail agency is called providing the basic necessities for international trade, travel, and communication. It obviously has some power to establish international law and decency, or otherwise that Saudi two-bit dictator wouldn’t feel threatened enough to make threads himself, and it’s obviously relevant enough for that thread to remain all bark and no bite. In terms of international justice, the UN has successfully run dozens of tribunals and investigations, from Libanon to the Balkans to Ruanda.
Yes, other matters see little progress. Politics is slowly boring holes into thick wood or whatever the saying is. That has little to do with the UN, which is just a forum for nation states to talk. Those matters simply have no solution that everyone agrees to (yet),
In that vain, it’s a mistake to even expect the UN to have the sort of power to force its own will onto states, or to even expect it to have any such will at all. For political questions, the UN does not have an identity, or any power, separate from that of its member states. That’s why it’s headed by a Secretary General, not a President or Prime Minister.